Raiders
by Quinn Mallory
Summary: Ever noticed how raiders are complete idiots, respawn every few days in certain places for no good reason, and aren't good enough fighters to actually, you know, raid anything? Turns out there's a reason for all that.
**Entry on a terminal found in the ruins of Vault 61:**

My name is Henry Jacobs V. No, I don't have very unimaginative ancestors: they were probably above average in that regard, actually, since my genes were chosen for this purpose. Yes, _my_ genes: I'm a clone, like the previous three versions. II died of old age, in his bed, making him the lucky one. III was killed when a generator he was working on exploded: the parts we get are old, fairly often the wrong ones, and usually defective or damaged when they are the right ones. IV was shot by one of the junkies while trying to explain why a mechanical failure had caused no new clones to come out of here for a week.

We've had to maintain this terrifying balance for years. Make them too quickly, and they won't be smart enough to realize they shouldn't kill the scientists who make more of them. Make them too slowly, and the current ones punish us, which usually involves someone dying unpleasantly.

At least they mostly stay out of here. They seem to treat us as a black box: food, spare parts, chemicals, biomass, and nasty threats go in, and chems and more "raiders" come out.

Probably some of the other scientists have written things like this, but I thought I'd...actually, I don't really know why I'm writing this. I suppose Dr. Mayfield (we call each other "doctor" out of habit, even though only our originals actually had those "doctorates") would say that it's a sense of guilt I'm trying to assuage. And yes, that exists. I don't know how much havoc our actions have wreaked in the lands above, in the sun. I don't want to know. So this is a sort of apology.

But what can we do? We are of ordinary physical courage, I suppose. But it's not the dying we're afraid of: a fair number of us would probably prefer that to this pointless existence. It's what would happen before we died, if we refused to make more "raiders". They could kill almost all of us, slowly and painfully, and it would only slow them down: any one of us could run the cloning vats from the DNA banks. It would take years—intelligent people take longer to grow—but in the end, we could all be replaced. I've thought of mass suicide, but, it's not out of the question that they could run the equipment just enough to make a few more copies of us and start it up again. And the will to survive is too strong in us.

 _They_ don't have much of a will to survive. They die in droves, swift victims of any organized forces or mutated animals of the surface they meet, charging recklessly at enemies they cannot hope to overcome. Their brains are not fully developed: they are victims of their own demands for speed in our production, for quantity over quality. Many come out looking worn with age, victims of some random failures or errors in the genome. Their copious consumption of chems improves their physical capabilities in battle, but cripples their brains further. They bring back many cloth garments, baseball bats, and battered pistols, and feed us with radroach and mole rat flesh, but heavier armor, lasers, and "death claw" parts arrive very rarely, and with their bearers in bad shape.

They have a society, of sorts. It operates essentially how bands of apes would if they all had deadly weapons and were hopped up on drugs: that is, the strongest, meanest, and cleverest take what they want and do what they want, and all the others do what they say and try to stay out of their way. They kill each other fairly often right here in the vault: they dump the bodies down the stairs, and we take them and throw them into—back into—the biomass processer. Mostly. A few times in the past, the hydroponics down here broke, they forgot to bring us food, and we had to take what we could get.

Their strongest, meanest, and cleverest (the SMCs? Sounds like "SMG", and that's about right) don't bother coming down here, of course; they send their cronies. We do know a few things about them: the head honcho seems to be a guy they call Death (a Tuck Max clone). They aren't big on subtlety. Death likes to use Psycho, as do most of his top people, which is why we have to make a lot of it, which keeps us from making as much Jet as they want, which is why Death's guards periodically have to deal with Jet addicts who try to get down here and take it. They do get down here, but without pulses. Death also apparently likes having a bunch of identical attractive women, which is why we have a lot of trouble keeping the supply of Ruby Hendricks stem cells up to the task. (Apparently, virtually all of the Ruby Hendricks clones stay in the Vault, being used for about what you would expect.) For a Psycho user, though, he's surprisingly rational: he, like all his predecessors, understands the advantages of everyone being, quite literally, replaceable.

I need to return to work. If we don't have three new clones ready at the end of today, someone's going to die, and it won't be one of them.

 **Audio recordings found on a terminal in the ruins of Vault 61, transcribed:**

1

OVERSEER SANDS: Dr. Mayfield says there's no reason for concern about the psychological stability of the new clones, that they're just incompetent. I'm not sure I trust him about that, but in the end, it doesn't make much of a difference. Given that they probably won't be able to perform better than anyone currently in the Vault on the standard tests, they'll be Excess anyway, and we won't have to deal with them anymore. Sometimes I regret that we have to exile people this way to avoid overtaxing our resources, but frankly I'm glad this lot are going.

2

OVERSEER SANDS: Honestly, Wells—I don't get what the purpose of these experiments with reducing the growth time is supposed to be. All this is doing is forcing me to kick more people out of the Vault every month, which isn't doing anyone any good.

DR. WELLS: Sands, you have to keep things in perspective. We were placed here to preserve mankind, and resettle the surface after the War. Based upon the information we have from the Excess, the birth rate out there is barely keeping up with the death rate. The population is orders of magnitude lower than it was before the War. We are still in the danger zone for population collapse: population bottlenecks and radiation result in more rapid evolution for the mutated wildlife, as well as humans, out there. And they reproduce more quickly than humans.

OVERSEER SANDS: Wells, what you're saying is basically quantity over quality. You're talking about keeping humanity alive by churning out new people faster than the old ones get killed. That's not...I don't know if that's something we should be doing.

DR. WELLS: Where superior mutations have arisen on the surface, natural selection will continue to favor offspring with such phenotypes. Our additions will not significantly hurt man's genetic optimization, but they will prevent him from becoming too heavily outnumbered in his conflicts with mutated cockroaches, crabs, and scorpions. In terms of the actual preservation of human lives on the surface, there is little we can do. We are neither physicists, mechanical engineers, nor soldiers. We can do little to improve their security. Some of our trained physicians have volunteered as Excess, and their reports indicate that they are making a positive contribution. Of course, if you were willing to reveal the Vault's location and—

OVERSEER SANDS: No. That is out of the question. On one point, I agree with you: humanity is too valuable to jeopardize. We're too important in keeping it going to risk letting assholes out there know where we are. What I'm concerned about is that you've been focusing on this quick-growth stuff instead of the intelligence optimization project.

DR. WELLS: As I've said before, natural selection has been performing optimization of this planet's life far longer than we have, and, especially now, is better at it. Let the surface provide the quality: we will provide the quantity.

MS. BATES: Overseer, James Webb wants to see you. He's fallen for one of the Excess Hendricks clones and he doesn't want her thrown out.

OVERSEER SANDS: [groan] Those damn Hendricks clones are nothing but trouble. Sexy trouble, but that's still trouble.

DR. WELLS: Overseer, I think you would have fewer problems of this type if you let the Hendricks clone on your staff be decl—

OVERSEER SANDS: Ruby, that is, she, is more than a Hendricks clone—no, I don't want to hear it! Get back to work—preferably on the intelligence stuff!—and I'll deal with you later. All right, Ms. Bates, send Webb in. [mumbling, in which only "clones", "childbearing", and "thinking with little heads" are discernable]

3

OVERSEER SANDS: Wells and Mayfield aren't having any luck with the gray matter issue. They can make more clones faster now, but they're dumb as rocks. To top it off, Mayfield actually admitted they have violent tendencies, and that's a big understatement, knowing him. I've increased security in the lab areas—which the chief didn't like, but that lazy bum needs to earn his keep for once—and hopefully we can keep this under control until the next Excess Day. In the meantime, I'm stopping all further production of clones. These guys need to go back to the drawing board and work on this some more instead of producing more Neanderthals on PCP.

4

OVERSEER SANDS: [loudly and angrily] Wells, this is completely unacceptable! I gave you a direct order to refrain from making any additional clones! Instead, you made forty more, with the intelligence of three-year-olds and the morals of... [sputtering]. What the fuck were you thinking? The Excess transports are having to make five trips! Five! That's never happened before! It greatly increases the risk of someone seeing and managing to follow them! And to top it off, you used biomass which was supposed to go to the hydroponics, and we'll have to replace! I have half a mind to declare you Excess!

DR. WELLS: [also angrily] Overseer, we were about to make a breakthrough with the intelligence problem. We obtained some very good data on the neural networking problems with the last batch! If you and your goons hadn't barged into the lab and shut everything down—

OVERSEER SANDS: You said you were about to have a breakthrough a week ago!

DR. WELLS: And we did! We fixed the neurotransmitters!

OVERSEER SANDS: And if you'd fixed the neural whatever, something else would've been fucked up! You cannot make functional humans with a mere few days of growth! It is not possible!

DR. WELLS: You are behaving like those who denied the possibility of the Copernican system, or heavier-than-air flight, or—

OVERSEER SANDS: You are not Galileo or Orville Wright. You are a jackass. If—

[indecipherable whispering]

OVERSEER SANDS: Chief, throw him in a cell while I figure out what to do with him. We've got a bigger problem. We've lost contact with the Excess convoy. The last thing we heard over the radio was something about Excess with guns. We have to assume—

[a loud bang, followed by confused shouting about the lights being out]

MS. BATES: Agnew says there's something wrong on the lower level! He can't raise anyone inside the lab!

OVERSEER SANDS: Get the fucking lights back on!

 **Excerpt from the personal diary of Lieutenant Jane Mags**

The Vault operation was a success. We cleared the whole place out, and everything shooting back died. It was easier than Legion, really: those were people, even if they were assholes. These guys were like crazed animals. We caught some of them alive, mainly a bunch of identical copies of this gorgeous woman and some scientists. I wish I looked like that. Sergeant Pointy told me they're "clones".

Unfortunately, we don't know as much as we'd like. One of the raiders got the bright idea to try to blow up the reactor to get us out of here. He caused a "partial meltdown", which flooded the lower levels with radiation. That killed most of the scientists. The survivors were weirdly calm about it: they said we could just make new clones of the dead ones, like it didn't make any difference. One of the women actually said she missed her lover and wanted to get him back as soon as the radiation went down and she could run the "cloning vats". Why are these Vaults always so weird?

Major Sheen still hasn't decided what he wants to do with the clones. He's pretty angry at the scientists and clones for spewing all these assholes everywhere for all these years, and I can't say I blame him. Not sure there'd be much point in shooting them though, unless you told them they wouldn't get cloned again afterward. I hope he doesn't want to do that, though—these people were mostly just between a rock and a hard place. I don't think he will.

I'm glad the Brotherhood did their bit. I still don't like them, but they're damn effective in a fight, and they soaked up a lot of bullets that would've ended up in our guts otherwise.


End file.
